Think of the engines as a big horizontal stabilizer but it's at the front, in front of the center of gravity. Normally it doesn't do much anything since the angle of attack is zero. But if you increase pitch, it will increase nose-up momentum.
For some reasons it's not common to put the engines further back. DC-9 style, on the sides of the rear fuselage might work. Or maybe over the wing and slightly to the rear, like Hondajet.
Specifically with regard to the flight characteristics, MCAS is a band-aid on a problem created by cost-minimization -- the desire to avoid a hardware redesign (to properly accommodate the larger engines) and/or a re-certification.
My point just was, a complete redesign of the 737 still would have to deal with the same aerodynamic issues as the 737 MAX, as they are rather fundamental to this kind of jets. But indeed, it would have been easier to deal with it with a new design.
It is less mentioned, that shortly after the MAX crashes, Airbus mandated that in some planes the last rows were kept empty until some software updates were deployed. So they seem to have discovered some boundary conditions they were not happy with and decided to be rather safe till they augmented the software.
... without triggering re-evaluation of the seriousness/consequences of failure. That meant that failures of MCAS were considered unproblematic, which meant that lower levels of redundancy were deemed acceptable.
Quite a process/management failure.
No, it would have more ground clearance, so it wouldn't need flat bottomed cowlings nor MCAS.
And the effect is fundamental to large engines. The effect which required MCAS would also happen if the machine had larger ground clearance and would be mounted more under the wings. Actually the way the engines are mounted on the MAX moves them closer to the longitudinal axis of the airplane and thus reduces and thrust-related tendency to pitch up.
https://leehamnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/737NG-vs-M...
https://aerocorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Aegean-Air...
But, MCAS was only ever using a single angle of attack sensor as its source of truth, so if there was a fault in that single sensor, MCAS could activate at normal attitudes.
But the real problem was that Boeing hadn’t documented MCAS, to avoid the requirement for pilots to obtain type certification for the MAX (so any existing 737 pilot could to fly it without additional training - and it wasn’t just Southwest objecting to this training), and to avoid a full FAA certification process for the MAX.
So on an MCAS activation, even if they had had an AoA alert, pilots would not know how to instinctively deal with it. (I don’t doubt an AOA disagree alert would give invaluable information allowing the pilots to rule out most failures, which when only a few thousand feet high would maybe have saved both planes.)
On the previous day to the Lion 610 crash, the incident aircraft suffered an MCAS activation and fortunately a pilot in the jump seat realised what was happening and what was needed to deactivate it.
It seems being sat behind the trim wheels (so he could see they were moving) and not wrestling to keep the plane in the sky at the same time was needed for that to happen. It must have been terrifying.
They don't need to redesign the wings to accommodate the newer, larger engines.